


a charm of magpies

by rowankhanna



Series: Newt and Credence at Christmas [1]
Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Cute, Fluff, Fluffy, Hot Chocolate, Hugs, I may be obsessed with hot drinks, M/M, Secret Santa, Some angst, cuteness, festive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 09:57:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8975032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowankhanna/pseuds/rowankhanna
Summary: Brought together by their class's Secret Santa exchange, eccentric bookworm Newt wants shy classmate Credence to have a happy Christmas. Modern day high school AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I don't have a lot of Christmas spirit this year (we don't have a tree up because our cat keeps mauling it), but it's one of my favourite times of year for people coming together, so why not have some cute fanfic for it?

The entirety of Credence’s Secret Santa gift-purchasing experience is done with Tina attached to him by the hip. He knows nothing about Newt, the boy on the opposite end at the back of his biology class, save for that he almost never seems to do the work, always sketching and leaving his textbook shut, looking bewildered when the teacher asks him a question, and yet somehow always knowing the answer anyway, effortless where Credence has to spend days reading, but Credence doesn’t have a Facebook or an Instagram or any form of social media and his phone is saved only for informing his Ma of where he is and how long he’ll be and when he’s on the bus home, head rattling against the fogging window, and so Tina has to find out for him. She tells him at school, writes it down in her trusty spiral-bound notebook: _curious, intellectual, loves animals, likes to read, animal rights activist, vegetarian, sucker for romance novels_. Credence muses for a week over what he’s going to buy with his limited funds, scrabbled together from friends and the cold concrete ground of New York City, wishing he could write them in his own books, but those are limited to notes, because Ma looks over them every night, chastising him if she doesn’t think he’s taken enough.

His way out into the city is an easy one: he goes on the day he has band practice. He misses nothing, after all: his playing is flawless, every press of the buttons on his horn muscle memory, his tone refined from hours and hours of practice at home, the church filled with the melodies of famous composers mixed in with modern jazz and blues. It’s the one luxury Ma doesn’t seem to mind, pleased that Credence is occupying his time and fighting off sloth, and while he found learning tedious, his heart breaking over every slipped finger, every flat sharp, he plays now so effortlessly that he doesn’t mind it at all, disappearing into the music, into the riffs and sequences and movements. While the band suffers without him, without his steady pace and rhythmic intensity, he walks through the aisles of the department store with Tina, hat clutched to his diaphragm.

“I don’t think I see anything,” Credence admits after a while. Tina looks up at him, her eyes shining, surprised at his engagement. He never looks like he sees – just looks like his vision skirts everything, unregistering, vague. “Maybe we should go somewhere else.”

Tina lights up. “I know where we should go,” she says, grabbing Credence’s hand as she leads him down the stairs (not the elevator: he feels like he’s being crushed in the elevator, like he’s plummeting to a death that squeezes him inwards from both sides). They emerge into the waning light of the winter streets, Credence replacing his hat and pulling his scarf tighter around himself, the air blowing a cold bitter breeze as they turn a corner he’s never turned before. The street is one of the bright and bustling ones that dominate this side of town, the pleasant side where the bright-eyed people angle for their dreams and where pitch-black church buildings like Credence’s home would be entirely amiss, replaced by white glass buildings of modern beauty. The shops are all local businesses run by people with smiles wide as rulers, and the one that Tina takes Credence to is a shop with dark wood floors, burnished, furnished with jars of sweets and preserved insects and cheery potted plants that give a beautiful viridescent glow, like organic bulbs. Canvas paintings hang from the walls, neon acrylic paintings of majestic cockatiels and cats with helium-fluffed tails.

It takes Credence a long time to decide what he should get Newt: everything seems like him, a shop full of zoological-themed marvels, but he settles on a little pocket notebook crested with what is, according to the label, a New Caledonian owlet-nightjar, with a cockatiel on the back, and a brass-coloured necklace of a timepiece centred with a magpie. He doesn’t mean to buy entirely birds, but the birds call to him with symphonies much like those he plays on his horn, symphonies that flow, every note shift coming from within, without question, without need for sheet music.

The shopkeeper beams at him, and though Tina reaches out to pay on Credence’s anxious behalf, he pushes forward, placing the items on the busy countertop, suppressing the shake that comes from deep within him, ingrained. She has ginger hair in a messy bun and freckles that scatter from an explosion in the centre of her face, and the kind of smile that could bring Credence down from a panic attack, the kind of smile that Newt wears, too. “Christmas present?” she asks as she takes the notes from Credence’s outstretched hands.

“Yeah,” he says breathlessly. “Secret Santa. He loves animals.” Credence pauses. “I wish I could buy him the whole shop.”

The shopkeeper laughs. “I get that a lot. Just sneak this in with his gift, if you want.” She places the pendant and notebook in a red striped paper bag, slipping a small and colourful business card in with them. “I hope he likes it! I’m sure he’ll be overjoyed to be wearing that mischievous little magpie.”

Credence smiles, accepting his change and slotting the paper bag into his tattered rucksack, which is falling apart at the seams, but he learns to make do, his repairing ability (as with the rest of the Barebones) phenomenal. He knows he’ll have time to hide it in the compartment under his desk before Ma searches his bag, and knows he’ll be able to sneak it out with him on the day of the biology class’s exchange. As he steps out, plan whirling and forming, Tina touches his arm and squeezes it.

“You bought it all on your own, Credence!” She almost squeals in his face, jumping up and down. She’s spent the entirety of her years with Credence having to buy things on his behalf, loose change and flapping notes pawing between their hands a practiced ritual that she twitches to avoid. He smiles timidly back at her, a little frightened, having been entirely unaware of his own capability: he had been distracted, pulled into the allure of the shining magpie, the fear in his heart swallowed up and forgotten in the beauty.

“Oh,” he says simply, “so I did.”

She almost screams in his face. “You did it, Credence! I’m so proud of you!” She clings to his hands, bouncing up and down. “And you’ve got Newt his presents and everything!” They walk to his bus stop, the peculiar winter sun beating down on them, two high schoolers with bouncing backpacks and study-sapped faces, Tina blabbing constantly at him about her excitement, about how she’s certain that he can progress, can learn to overcome the anxiety that swallows him whole sometimes, though Credence looks at her with cynicism.

“I’m not sure,” he says, brushing his hair behind his ear. “Maybe it was just an exception.”

“Don’t be so negative,” Tina chastises, checking the electronic monitor above the rotating adverts: their bus is several stops away yet, though ‘several stops’ could be a matter of a few minutes or of many. The stops around New York City are scattered almost randomly, like someone had stuck pins into a map. “Everything will be fine.”

Their bus pulls up within a few minutes and Credence instinctively nestles himself into the seats at the back, tucking himself up against the window, rucksack pulled up against his chest. He turns to Tina. “Do you – do you think he’ll like it?” She looks at him blankly. “Newt. The presents.”

“Oh, of course he will,” she says encouragingly. “I mean, they’re just like him. Him and his strange clothes; he’s the kind of oddball who’d shop there. Well, not oddball, but you know what I mean... hipster? Or are hipsters something else?”

“I know what you mean,” Credence assures her, amused by her warbling. It’s the reason he likes her so much: she’s the chatter to his silence, able to pick out awkward pauses in his lack of conversation and fill them with words, meaningless or not. She talks to him for the bus journey about how she’s excited for the Secret Santa – hers is a plump and cheerful boy called Jacob who, despite his inability in biology, is a beaming reminder of how lovely the world can be, and she bought him a cookbook for pastries and cakes and cookies, and the two of them muse over who might be their own Secret Santa: Tina suspects that Credence’s might be Percy, an older boy with a proficiency for maths and biochemistry who led the debating club, and Credence offers that Tina’s might be Abernathy after rolling through names, entirely unsure and indecisive, but Tina nods along, taken in.

She gets off before him, still in the nicer part of town, and Credence gets off just beyond the border where good and bad mix, where the unstained meets the stained, entering into the church. His Ma isn’t in the building, nor are his sisters, so they must be at a rally. He crouches beneath his ink-stained desk, pulling away the panel that hides his secret compartment, containing mostly novels condemned by his Ma, and slides Newt’s present in, biting down the excitement that bubbles in his stomach: he’s gotten Newt a present. And it’s perfect.

 

The Secret Santa exchange for Credence’s biology class takes place on a Wednesday, just after lunchtime, most of the students still scoffing from their snackboxes. The teacher lets them sit in a huddle around the central desk, Credence instantly pushed to the back, sitting on the outskirts of the class, surprisingly close to Newt, who is typing insistently on his phone, occasionally pausing to softly frown and click his tongue against his inner cheek. Tina pulls her chair over to Credence.

“Okay,” the teacher says loudly to the class. “Find your Secret Santa and give them their present. I’ll put on some music.” A rapid-fire discussion of loud voices ensues immediately, arguing over what song they should put on, but the teacher ignores the more outspoken of the class, _Last Christmas_ floating from the speakers. Tina reaches out, clapping Credence’s shoulder, making him jump.

“Oh, shit, sorry,” she whispers, raising her hands. “Go on! Go give it to him!” Credence anxiously moves his hands to lift himself from his stool, just standing up when a figure moves in front of him, intercepting him. Credence shuffles backwards: he can tell from the all-black outfit that it’s Percy (who knew, Tina was right), who shoves a black box into Credence’s hands.

“You’re a hard one to buy for,” he says gruffly.

“Sorry,” Credence whimpers.

“The hell are you sorry for? Be happy. You’ve got a goddamn present.” He looks at Credence, who is staring at the floor, and sighs. “Will you look up for a second, kid?” Credence weakly shakes his head, perfectly aware that it would take almost physical strength to look up at Percy, who radiates intimidation. “Fine. But stop being so damn sorry about everything. You look like you’re sorry that you exist. Chin up.”

“Why are you saying these things to me?” Credence asks, knitting his fingers and then un-knitting them on a loop.

Percy shrugs. “Well, you learn a lot about someone when you have to buy them a nice present.” He steps in to Credence, who fights the urge to step back, shuffling his boots. “Who did you buy for?” Credence points to Newt, who appears to have somehow already given his gifts and is back at typing. “Well, how about you try to give them to him like you mean it? Without staring at the floor. Maybe, I don’t know, look past him or something. At his ear.” He pats Credence on the back gently, enough to set him off but enough not to scare him, or scare him too much, at least.

Newt glances up from his phone when Credence approaches and slides it back into one of his many pockets. “Oh, hello there,” he says, beaming up. “Are you the one with the presents?”

“Er – yes, that would be me.” Credence rummages in his bag, struggling to find them in the depths of his pockets (his bag is like an abyss – going on the amount of books that he can see are crammed into Newt’s Fjallraven, it looks like his giftee’s is the same), but he pulls out the paper bag and hands it along to Newt.

“Can I open it now?” he asks. Credence is surprised by the question, as he’s always taken the choice of saving his presents until Christmas Day itself – he gets one or two from Ma, who strictly reminds the Barebone children the meaning of Christmas as they excitedly tear open the newspaper wrapping, drilling it into their skulls so hard that all the joy is sapped, and keeps some from his friends to make Christmas feel less miserable in comparison to his friends’ massive piles of gift-wrapped riches. He nods at Newt, who produces a nail file and severs the sellotape closing the bag in one swift swipe. “I like the bag,” he says.

“Me too,” Credence replies, feeling Percy’s eyes on his back, so he tries. He _tries_ , forcing his eyes up from the floor, from Newt’s bag perched precariously on his lap, from Newt’s hands carefully removing the notebook and turning it over, thumb flicking through the pages, and he goes for a spot of Newt’s hair where it glows golden in the humming light of the laboratory, though it woefully disappears when Newt turns his head to speak, so he finds himself looking down again.

“Cockatiels are my favourite bird,” Newt comments softly. “I have two at home. They should come in pairs, you see, or they get lonely.” Credence does his best to look up, and finds this easier as Newt isn’t looking at him, instead running his thumb over the glossy surface of the notebook. He reaches into the bag again and produces the necklace, making a noise of fascination as he turns it over in his hand, examining the craftsmanship and the hidden details Credence didn’t notice. He pauses. “Are you aware of how many magpies are on this necklace?”

“I thought there was one,” Credence says blankly, staring at the main feature. Newt smiles, pointing out smaller magpies caught between the hours of the timepiece.

“There are nine,” he says, pointing the other eight out to Credence. “Do you know what that means?” Credence shakes his head, waiting for the explanation, but Newt just chuckles, unhooking the chain and clasping it blindly behind his neck with surprising precision. “Would you – would you like to come out with me after school? For a coffee, or for a walk?”

Credence is surprised, and he can feel the pain in his hands that he knows will come if he accepts this offer, but Newt is beaming so readily that he nods. “O-okay.” He looks back over his shoulder; both Percy and Tina are deep in conversation with each other, so he lets himself drop his gaze as he sits down next to Newt, shoulders hunched over. “I hope you like the presents. I don’t really know you.”

“I really like them. They’re perfect.” He turns around, suddenly enraptured: “That reminds me: where did you get them from?”

“Oh, it was a shop on... um... I’m not sure. I don’t know this area very well. But Tina showed me it. It was really pretty.” He pauses. “Wait, she said there was a business card in there.”

“Is there?” Newt checks. “So there is.” He looks up. “Maybe we could go together sometime.” Credence reddens, but nods, and he decides to try and make conversation by asking Newt what he’s doing on his phone, which turns out to be writing a blog to provide an easy and informative guide on how to understand and take care of all the animals he keeps, and while they talk, he doesn’t notice it, but Newt begins to lean closer and so does he, his eyes flicking from Newt’s phone to parts of his face: his concentrated brow, the tug at the ends of his lips when he talks about his animals, the dimples in his cheeks, the electricity that bubbles within him, shooting like sparks with his excitement. Credence can’t help but watch, rapt, taken in by the other boy’s enthusiasm.

At the end of the school day, Newt scoops his Fjallraven onto his back and pulls his big blue coat around him, wearing an absurd amount of layers, one of which being his proudly worn drama hoodie (“tech crew,” he explains when Credence asks), and he pulls his scarf on, too, grey and yellow and well-worn, much like most of his things. Credence is wearing fewer layers, practically naked against the New York winter, clad in only what the family can afford. Newt looks sympathetically at him.

“Would you like to borrow my scarf?” he offers, but Credence shakes his head.

“I’m okay,” he says, watching Percy pass him and glance back at him for a brief moment.

“Should we go for a coffee?” Newt asks as he steps out into the cold, pulling his coat tighter around him at the blast of the bitter wind.

“I can’t afford one.”

“I’ll pay,” Newt replies. “It’d be better to stay in the cold. And better for Pickett.”

“Pickett?”

“My rat. Don’t worry, he’s well-tempered. Rats aren’t dirty at all.” He places a hand in his pocket, letting Credence see a small flash of dark grey fur and light pink paws, and what he swears is a tiny little burgundy jumper wrapped cosily around the rat. He wishes he had a jumper like that – he sees them on students so often in the bitter cold and shivers in his thin layers. “Do you know any good places nearby?”

“I don’t really know this area,” Credence admits, watching the shopfronts go by, the street a hub of artisan coffeehouses and bakeries with the strong smell of sweetness and chocolate wafting from their half-open doors, the tables and chairs outside near empty save for the bundled-up foolhardy whose faces would disappear in smoky air when they dared to lift their cup. “Everything looks nice. We don’t eat out at home.”

“You live in the old church on the other side of town, don’t you?” Newt asks, picking a chocolate-orientated hot drinks shop, their counters lined with luscious cakes, the perfection of their consistency almost making Credence drool, their chocolate icing woven with white stripes. “I’ve seen you around before, handing out leaflets.”

“Ma makes me,” Credence interjects almost immediately, surprised at the slight raise of his own voice and hard intonation. “I don’t like it. She makes me stand out there all day until my feet hurt.” The lines that cut his hands suddenly begin to ache, and he runs a thumb over one, wishing he could take the pain away, but it haunts him sometimes, a phantom.

“What would you like to drink?” Newt asks, looking away and up to the chalked blackboards, the penmanship perfect. Credence glances up, too, looking through the dizzying amounts of chocolate drinks and trying to decipher the differences between this and that chocolate. Newt makes a suggestion. “Maybe just a normal hot chocolate?” Credence nods, and Newt whirls back around in a controlled explosion of blue longcoat, making the order for a milk hot chocolate and a rose and vanilla hot chocolate, which Credence had certainly not heard of before, and he stole a sip from the opposite rim of the cup to the one that Newt was drinking from. It tasted of what Credence could only describe as affection, warm and almost fluffy.

They sit at a table beside the window, watching the light drain from the baby blue sky while taking sips from their softly steaming mugs, each adorned with the shop’s Quetzalcoatl insignia, a complex figure reduced to a series of well-chosen black lines filled with muted colours. Newt’s fingers, stained and with nails clipped beyond clipped, tap against the brittle white of the mug.

“Do you enjoy biology?” he asks, gazing up from the rippling umber surface of his drink.

Credence pauses. “It’s okay. I find it tricky.”

Newt chuckles. “Me too. The processes – the biochemistry of it – I find that stuff more difficult to understand. Just a lot of rote learning, really.” He takes a sip of rose and vanilla, and as he watches a man on an azure bicycle roll along the street, turns back to Credence, who is blowing on the surface of his hot chocolate, lips forming a small ‘o’. “Um, Credence.” He reaches up, thumb and forefinger turning the magpie over a few times. “Thank you very much for the presents.” He looks down. “I don’t usually get any at all, since I don’t have a lot of friends.”

“Me neither,” Credence admits. “Just from Tina. And from Percy this year, in the Secret Santa.”

Newt raises an eyebrow. “Percy? Presents? Perish the thought. What on Earth did he get you?”

“Oh, I haven’t opened it yet,” Credence replies. “I’m saving it for Christmas.” He places both hands on either side of the mug for a second, just long enough to feel the benefit as he watches a group of kids go past bundled in thick down jackets. “He’s a bit scary, but he seems nicer than he looks.”

“I agree. He was excellent in drama production this year; he was good with the new crew.”

“I heard it was a good production.” Credence pauses. “Tina said it was a good production.”

“We worked hard. All of us.” Newt sighs, resting his chin on the palm of his roughened hand. “Do you do anything? Any hobbies? I can’t say I know much about you, bar that you sit at the other side of the back of the class and that you always look intently focused.”

“I play the French horn and play in band. It’s the only hobby Ma lets me have. She says we should just enjoy the simple pleasures.”

“Such as shivering in the cold on the street handing out leaflets to people who don’t care?” Newt shoots right back – of course, he doesn’t shoot this to Credence, just an angry objection to the life he’s forced to live. Credence says nothing back, just takes a very long sip of his cooling hot chocolate, unable to help but feel a horrible twinge of guilt at his own cruel thoughts about Ma. “Sorry. Are you alright?”

“I’m okay,” Credence mumbles, and it’s in that moment that Newt sees his palm.

“Credence,” he says, voice clipped, tempered. “Let me see your hands.”

He wants to say no, wants to tell Newt that he can’t look, that it’s nothing, but finds himself laying his hands flat on the table, on their backs, the scars and cuts that criss-cross them on display, shameful reminders of pain long past. “Oh, Credence,” Newt whispers, running his thumbs across the cicatrices, the slight pain that Credence never seems to be able to shake abating with the contact.

“I’m sorry,” Credence says, “please forget about me. I just gave you a present. Don’t get yourself into this, please.”

“Christmas is a time for people to come together. Families, friends, classmates, strangers.” Newt’s hands swallow up Credence’s, their fingers winding together until it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts. “So I think I’d like to get myself into this. I would like you to have a nice Christmas, since you put so much thought into my presents despite not knowing me.”

When they leave, Credence finds himself unable to let go of Newt’s hand, entranced by the novelty of contiguity and of the mellowness of his skin, and Newt finds himself unable to let go of Credence, accompanying him to the bus stop.

“It’s been nice meeting you like this,” he says.

“Yeah,” says Credence. He wonders if Newt is going to do something, because he feels it, the other boy buzzing with some sort of tension, and he goes still as Newt’s hand comes up to his cheek, warm to his cold, caressing him. He leans into it, letting his eyes flutter shut as he breathes deeply, every nerve ending inside him on fire, stirred from their numbness, the touch lighting him, luminescent with the sensuality of connection.

Newt lowers his hand, unreadable, though his mouth plays like he wants to smile. Or maybe grimace. “Your bus is coming.”

Credence can barely say goodbye, fumbling over the consonants and the vowels, suddenly foreign in his tongue, but he has to and he barely makes it with enough time to scramble away on the bus, his eyes plastered to Newt, who watches the bus spin away along the street, bouncing on the cobbled path.

 

Credence doesn’t see Newt again the next day, which is unsurprising, considering the day only lasts half as long and he doesn’t have Biology. Tina practically grills him about the events of the day before, but Credence stays clammy, unable to even admit to himself the torrent of feelings Newt stirred in his belly, and she gives up, amused.

He’s not allowed to see her again once Christmas break begins, and spends most of his time sitting working with the press, Mary Lou’s hatred of computers and modern technology (except phones, because she can always follow Credence with a phone) meaning he has to print leaflets the old fashioned way. He reads his textbooks and makes more notes, trying to comprehend the Krebs cycle and its relation to the rest of respiration, and hands out leaflets in the cold, occasionally letting his thoughts stray to Newt and the way he disliked Credence being forced to do this. He wonders now and then if Newt is out there watching, but he’s sure he’d see a flash of peacock blue and he never does.

One day out is all Credence gets: band plays at a shopping centre, eager for money, flanked on all sides by red buckets begging for donations. He stands in the front row, a euphonium player and a trombonist arguing behind him about how to play the rhythm of bar forty-two, the trombonist occasionally prodding him in the back with the slider, but he keeps himself from complaining – the occupational hazard of being in band is being hit by a stray instrument. It would hardly be the first time.

Christmas rolls around uneventfully. The streets outside are quiet, save for families taking walks, and even the church itself is fairly quiet. Credence invites in the homeless who come for food, and they sit around the table, tucking into the same meal they do every day, and while he would let them stay inside, where there’s at least shelter from the whipping winds, Mary Lou shoos them out in the afternoon and lets her children open their solitary presents. Credence gets a new coat, most definitely secondhand by its slightly tattered state, missing button, and hole in the back, but he likes it. It reminds him of Newt’s, but it’s black and has significantly fewer pockets, and the collar is less noticeable. Chastity gets a new Bible, as hers is held together with sellotape, her and Credence having spent many a night trying to keep the book from falling apart entirely. Modesty gets a spinning top, which she spins with absolute fascination on the tabletop for hours on end.

Credence heads back up to his room and removes the black box Percy gave him from the compartment beneath his desk, as well as a small chocolate bar Tina gave him. Percy’s present to him is a pendant, a triangle with a circle inside, cut with a line down the centre. He doesn’t know what the symbol is, and it seems odd, but he puts the pendant on anyway, tucking the symbol down his shirt so that Ma won’t see and question, and he places Tina’s chocolate bar in the pocket of his new coat as he pulls it on, snug and warm. He heads outside, standing in the alleyway beside the church, watching the grey clouds move in unity across the dimmed sky.

“Hello,” a familiar voice says, and he looks aside, Newt walking into the alley, holding a takeaway cup and a plastic bag that rocks by his thigh. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas,” Credence echoes almost blankly. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be with your family?”

“Christmas celebrations in our house don’t start until four,” says Newt, “so I thought I’d pay you a visit. There can’t be much harm in it, after all.” He hands the bag to Credence. “I couldn’t really wrap this and we ran out of gift bags, but I got you a present, too.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Credence breathes, accepting the bag and looking in.

“I didn’t spend any money,” Newt says bashfully, “but I have lots of these scarves. My granny keeps knitting them for me, and I have so many, and you always look so cold.” Credence takes the scarf and wraps it around his neck, surprised by its thickness and warmth: it looks thin and flimsy, but the scarf is well put-together, a Christmas present he won’t have to patch.

“Thank you,” he says, tugging on the scarf so it tightens around him, keeping him compact.

“And I got you another hot chocolate.” Newt passes the cup along to Credence, who is lost for words as he looks into the little gap in the lid, surprised by this sudden kindness.

“Why are you being so kind?”

Newt chews on his tongue, running over his thoughts before settling on: “Because you deserve more.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot, energy unbalanced. “Um, Credence. Do you remember when I asked you if you knew what nine magpies meant?” Credence nods. “It’s a traditional nursery rhyme, probably better known in England.” He takes a deep breath. “It goes like this:

 _One for sorrow,_  
Two for joy,  
Three for a girl,  
Four for a boy,  
Five for silver,  
Six for gold,  
Seven for a secret,  
Never to be told.  
Eight for a wish,  
Nine for a kiss,  
Ten for a bird,  
You must not miss.”

“Oh,” says Credence. “ _Oh_.” Then he cuts across the space between them and presses his lips to Newt’s, the action coming without even a pause for thought, the other boy’s lips chapped and their soft surface marred with rough skin, though Credence imagines his aren’t much better, chewed into caverns. Newt’s hands move but never settle, travelling from waist to shoulder to face, and when Credence finally lets himself pull back, his face is bubbling, mouth pressed into a line to avoid the smile that eventually breaks his face like a beam of light. “Sorry.”

“What on Earth are you apologising for?” Newt chuckles. “That was nice. I was worried that I might have been mistaken that you liked me.”

“Sorry,” Credence repeats, letting himself lean on Newt’s shoulder. “I... I’ve never really felt like this before, or done anything like this before.”

Newt puts an arm around Credence, feeling the stubble of the shaved part of the back of his head, short and pleasantly coarse. “That’s quite alright.”

They stand in the silent street for a while, Newt stroking the back of Credence’s head, Credence’s head tucked in next to Newt’s neck, occasionally discussing the day in mellifluous tones. Credence can imagine a Christmas with Newt, in a warm home decorated with fairy lights and with festive songs floating from tinny speakers, presents wrapped with ribbon tucked under the Christmas tree,  and food – though Credence can’t imagine what they would eat – more like a feast, and though he hasn’t noticed, he imagines it out loud, ideas flowing from him like air.

“You can come with me, if you want,” Newt says. Credence thinks of his Ma, thinks of the fresh pain on his palms, on his back, and he comes back into the moment, feeling his arms around Newt, feeling the affability in waves, feeling even like he belongs there, away from the church.

“Okay,” he says. “Ten for a bird you must not miss.”

The smile on Newt’s face shines like an Atolla jellyfish.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
